community building

Jan

2026

From Minneapolis: The Power of Collective Courage

A dear friend from Minneapolis sent me this heartfelt message about the resilience of her fellow citizens in the face of the ICE crackdowns (shared with permission):

“I’m so proud of my city right now. Everyone is in it for the long haul. Every shitty thing they do, more of us come out to witness, record, object. I’m expecting it to get worse before it gets better (if that’s even a thing anymore ‘better’), but we won’t go down quietly & we will win the narrative war.”

As an eyewitness account of the power of community she recommended:

https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/from-minneapolis-ive-never-seen-unity

Its author really captures the spirit of what’s unfolding:

“The resistance to ICE in Minneapolis is strong, generalized, and sustained. It’s also entirely decentralized and leaderless (or “leaderful” if you’d like).

Dec

2025

Van Beleidsprogramma naar Wijkimpact – Zo sla je eindelijk de brug

De kloof tussen beleid en wijk is geen motivatieprobleem, maar een verbindingsprobleem.

Vanuit mijn werk aan het bouwen van sterke samenwerkingscommunities zie ik dit patroon telkens weer: beleid, professionals en wijkbewoners opereren in parallelle werelden. Allen met eigen belangen, logica en doelen. Ze snappen elkaar niet omdat ze letterlijk verschillende talen spreken.
Wat nodig is? Gemeenschappelijke grond: een “werkveldtaal” waarin beleidsmaker, buurtcoördinator en bewoner elkaar daadwerkelijk begrijpen. Niet door één perspectief op te leggen, maar door samen een gedeelde werkelijkheid te creëren.

Dát is waar SDGs (duurzame ontwikkelingsdoelen) en IDGs (innerlijke ontwikkelingsdoelen) hun waarde bewijzen: als brugbegrippen tussen werelden die concrete maatschappelijke doelen verbinden met de capaciteiten die nodig zijn om ze te realiseren.

In onze praktijkgids laten Johan Vermeulen en ik zien hóe je die verbinding via SDGs en IDGs smeedt.… Read more...

May

2025

Community Building: The Hard Work Beyond the Tools

Just came across this story by Elle Hunt in The Guardian, which highlights an often overlooked fact: community BUILDING means exactly that – it requires time and sustained effort for a community to truly form and thrive:

“The word ‘community’ has warm, fuzzy connotations. But a siloed, individualistic culture also makes it harder to establish and maintain community; creating a shared identity and spirit of reciprocity takes effort and is not always comfortable.”

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/feb/05/how-to-build-community

Time and time again, this truth is forgotten – especially with the abundance of (online) community tools that promise instant connection, but often overlook the hard work required to build genuine community.

Of course, we community building professionals know that very well, but amidst the deluge of tools, tech, and systems we face in our daily work, it’s sometimes good to be reminded of the social roots of it all through a simple personal story: getting along with your neighbors!… Read more...

Apr

2025

The Community (Platform) Recession – Breaking Free to Build Better

Richard Millington from FeverBee Community Consultants shares some very interesting observations on how the field of community management may have entered a “community recession.” He points to possible causes such as a shift to profitability, changing member behaviors, and the growing expectations around AI.

This rings especially true in the area of platform-based enterprise communities. However, there is a much richer landscape of community types and tools—of which he lists some compelling examples. “Communities for Good,” in particular, is of personal interest to me and still offers so many opportunities for community building and support. The key development to watch is the gradual shift in community work from platform-centric to audience-centric approaches—what Richard calls the COMMUNITY EVERYWHERE approach.

Increasingly, communities live and work across many different online and physical spaces.… Read more...

Jun

2019

Community(Es)Sense

Last week, I attended the 2019 Communities & Technologies conference in Vienna:

The biennial Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference is the premier international forum for stimulating scholarly debate and disseminating research on the complex connections between communities – in their multiple forms – and information and communication technologies.

It is one of my favorite conferences, and as usual, it was an amazing meeting of minds. See the tweet stream for an impression of the topics discussed. More on the paper I presented in a future post.

After the conference, some of us took a tour of the futuristic new campus of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. The buildings are phenomenal, however, what really struck me was how the concept of the campus being a community space has been designed into everything, from the overall master plan of the campus area to very specific building details.… Read more...

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